Grassroots Innovation (Book)

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Introduction

Prof. Anil K. Gupta wrote the book ‘Grassroots Innovation: Minds on the Margin are not Marginal Minds’ in 2016. Published by Penguin Books India, the book is a compilation of his empirical research, carried out through the Shodh Yatras, on ingenious solutions and innovations crafted by common individuals, targeting local problems faced by local communities.

Prof. Gupta emphasises on the need for being open to the wisdom that is in the grassroots and also acknowledging it – through documentation and/or sharing commercial benefits. Documentation, he says, also helps the best practices of one area reach out to other area, just like a honeybee, which takes the nectar from flower but helps the flower by spreading its pollen far and wide. That's how India's the first formal project to document the wisdom of grassroots came was named Honey Bee Network. Many organisations then came in the wake of HBN's work, namely, the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), the Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN), and finally the National Innovation Foundation (NIF).

Grassroots Innovation explores the wisdom and creativity of communities and individuals across the country, and their journeys towards addressing various social challenges against all odds. Through these stories, it makes a case for niche-specific solutions and puts forth the argument that sidelining them for larger, scalable solutions would ultimately sideline a lot of communities which are often on the fringes of mainstream society.

The Book

The book is divided into 8 chapters.

Chapter 1 gives the crux of the book. It is peppered with various stories – of small farmers and social innovators, coolies and professors, and of Prof. Gupta himself. The first chapter introduces us to Prof. Gupta’s personal journey into seeking and promoting local wisdom, outlines the philosophy behind the Honey Bee Network, and narrates the foundation and story of the Shodhyatras.

In Chapter 2, Prof. Gupta narrates the birth and growth of the Grassroots Innovation movement. While the Honey Bee Network’s genesis can be found in his stint as an agricultural advisor in Bangladesh, its evolution in the multiple initiatives and organisations is rooted in the various academics, experts, students, innovators and government officials which Prof. Gupta collaborated with to shape the Grassroots Innovation movement.

In Chapter 3, Prof. Gupta writes about the shodhyatras, a distinct feature of the Grassroots Innovation movement. Originally, his shodhyatras began with focus on actual scouting and dissemination of grassroots innovators, but with time, they evolved to include biodiversity and idea competitions, recipe competitions among women, celebrating centenarians, exploring and appreciating nature-conserving practices and institutions, and sharing their database on sustainable technologies.

Prof. Gupta dedicates chapter 4 to listening, harnessing and enhancing creativity and innovation coming from the most unexpected quarters. He lists the first step as listening and observes that “we only really listen when we have the ability to reflect.” He acknowledges that listen to voices on the margin is not easy and requires effort, but through the rest of the chapter, he proves time and again how worthy those efforts are.

Chapter 5 focuses on the inner qualities that help shape, discover and celebrate innovations. Prof. Gupta begins with the concepts of inner and material knowledge, stating that, “It is my belief that the interaction between material and ethereal knowledge can... trigger the search for empathetic innovations.”

In Chapter 6, Prof. Gupta explores the concept, characteristics and various manifestations of frugality among grassroots innovations. Frugality, he says, has arisen from cultural importance placed on simplicity and scarcity during natural disasters and “aiming for more while parting with less”. Constraints and scarcity have fuelled and not curtailed imagination, and its examples range from a simple lever to draw water from a well, to the Mangalyaan and Chandrayaan Missions of ISRO.

Chapter 7 opens with the planning of first International Conference on Creativity and Innovation at Grassroots (ICCIG) at IIMA in 1997. The basic aim of the conference was to contribute to the interaction among natural, social, ethical and intellectual capital resources in the field of education – a concept which Prof. Gupta elaborates upon through the rest of the chapter.

The eighth and last chapter wraps up the book with a summary of key takeaways including but not limited to:

1. Sensing and addressing unmet needs of various communities is crucial for fostering inclusiveness, especially in a democracy.
2. Good ideas can come out of the most unexpected – and most unconventional – quarters and institutions, governance systems and knowledge networks must recognise and facilitate this fact.
3. Maximization, speed and smoothness in workflow are not always optimal for innovation.
4. Inertia, i.e. acceptance of constraints and suffering as status quo, needs to be questioned and overcome. Doing this is the first step towards finding innovating solutions.
5. Encouraging people-to-people copying and sharing of ideas and licensing of people-to-firm transfers of ideas under “Technology Commons” can be a future model for inclusive innovations at the grassroots level.

References

Gupta, Anil K. Grassroots Innovation: Minds On The Margin Are Not Marginal Minds. Random House India. 20 July 2016. https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Grassroots_Innovation.html?id=b22CDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

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